The Utica Tornado

Survivor displays an unshakable faith

Frances Myers' home was leveled, pieces of her past scattered, but hope lives in devastated town

April 25, 2004|By Ofelia Casillas, Tribune staff reporter.

UTICA, Ill. — Like her town, Frances Myers survived a tornado. She fought nature with faith, praying in a basement corner for the minutes it took storm cells to pulverize her home of 35 years.

Afterward, she ambled through the wreckage, working to salvage the pieces, wondering what would come next.

Myers, 84, and her neighbors face a decision--to walk away or write a new chapter in the life of their small town.

The tornado swept the people of Utica back toward their pasts--they have been picking through belongings and scattered mementos, holding them, cleaning them and remembering.

But it also forces them to face an uncertain future. Where does an elderly woman go when her home, and much of her hometown, has been blown away?

In the days after the tornado, Myers walked through what remained of her modest, two-bedroom home. Memories were trapped in rooms, and the history of things was more immediate than the things themselves.

In the kitchen with a beige linoleum floor, the back wall was gone. The destruction downtown could be seen over the sink. For years, Myers looked out through a window from that very spot as she ate egg, ham and cheese sandwiches.

In the wreck of her kitchen, she bragged about the stylish touches she had added--the wallpaper border with cherries, the peach-colored paneling. She picked up a sausage recipe on an index card from the floor, where dirt and groceries were scattered and laughed.

"It was good," she said of the dish.

Before entering the living room with beige Berber carpet installed last summer, she joked: "Wipe your feet off." She had gotten so many compliments on that carpet, she said.

There, the wall with the picture window from which she first saw the tornado coming at her had collapsed. Debris covered the brown recliner her husband sat in while dying of cancer.

In that living room, covered in shattered glass and dirt, the couple of 50 years had worked many crossword puzzles.

Myers said she was still getting used to being a widow after six years.

Headless statue

Myers entered her bedroom, where a Virgin Mary statue had lost its head and prayer pamphlets littered the ground near the bed, still made.

She picked up a white box. "My earrings," she said.

She held up a figurine of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

"I got them through the mail," she explained, naming five other religious figurines that survived the tornado.

Mary Ann Payne, Myers' daughter who lives in Ottawa, gathered some of her mother's clothing, including a collection of jeans with elastic waists, the day before. But now Myers plans to make a fresh start, with a new wardrobe, something she's been meaning to do for a while.

The woman had been hoping to paint her walls.

"Maybe something to bring out the rug," she said, laughing.

Crocheted hangers on the floor in the second bedroom reminded of a winter hobby Myers had years ago, before she watched so much television.

In a porcelain holder near the bathroom sink was her husband's toothbrush.

Off the farm

She had followed love to Utica.

Her husband, Howard Myers, was from Utica, so she moved there from Leonore, Ill., where she had grown up on a farm.

The couple lived in a handful of apartments and homes. One day, Howard Myers walked past the home in the 200 block of Canal Street and told his wife she would fall in love with it. And they both did.

They bought it for $15,500 in 1969. Growing up, Fannie Myers always wanted to be near a downtown with shops, restaurants and people. Now, she was.

In a town where almost one in five residents work in manufacturing, the Myerses did the same. For decades before retiring, she worked at a clock factory, her husband at a glass factory.

When Fannie Myers would get home from work, she'd find a note from her husband that listed the chores he had completed--dishes done, bed made. They had their ups and downs, she said, but everything turned out OK. He always gave her the best birthday cards.

The couple liked to go out to eat on Saturday nights. They'd take a drive on Sundays.

But Howard Myers fell down one day in 1992 and found out he had lung cancer.

He was a good mushroom hunter. He liked to walk and ride his bike.

"I wonder where that is?" Fannie Myers said of her husband's bicycle, looking around the house.

Line of sight

Myers had gazed out her living room picture window Tuesday to see the increasingly gray sky and then a huge, frightening funnel cloud. She instantly ran to her basement.

In the basement, she stood near two clotheslines, pink and yellow plastic daisies, two scales. She could hear her belongings flying into the air for what seemed like minutes. She was talking to Jesus, asking him to help her through it. When calm came, she hesitated.

She walked up the stairs, curious, dodging her groceries on the steps, and immediately saw the garage was gone as well as most of the home's walls.